Falsani: Something in the air: Grace

July 12, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 12:28 p.m.

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If the movie character Gordon Gekko turned "greed is good" into a mantra of the late 20th century, perhaps Pope Francis is a real human doing something of the opposite early in the 21st. In the four-plus months since becoming Pope, Francis has embraced a humble style that emphasizes the needs of the oppressed over the needs of those with means. And his message has resonated. He is so popular that the Italian version of Vanity Fair magazine named Pope Francis its 2013 "Man of the Year" even though 2013 still has several months to go. MICHELE BARBERO, AP

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Jeff Zarrillo, left, and Paul Katami, the couple who sued to overturn Proposition 8, were married by former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Public acceptance of gay marriage has shifted dramatically in the past three years. In some areas of life, acceptance is starting to replace condemnation. PATRICK T. FALLON, NYT

If the movie character Gordon Gekko turned "greed is good" into a mantra of the late 20th century, perhaps Pope Francis is a real human doing something of the opposite early in the 21st. In the four-plus months since becoming Pope, Francis has embraced a humble style that emphasizes the needs of the oppressed over the needs of those with means. And his message has resonated. He is so popular that the Italian version of Vanity Fair magazine named Pope Francis its 2013 "Man of the Year" even though 2013 still has several months to go. MICHELE BARBERO, AP

Moments before I left Laguna Beach to drive to Long Beach one recent Friday afternoon, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved its stay on gay marriages, giving county clerks permission to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples for the first time in more than five years.

By the time I pulled into the parking garage at the Long Beach Convention Center, where the United Church of Christ was holding the denomination's national, biannual gathering, Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo, a gay couple from Burbank who were plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned Prop. 8, were exchanging vows at Los Angeles City Hall in a ceremony officiated by outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (on his last day in office.)

Isn't it extraordinary how quickly history changes course?

But then "quickly" is a matter of perspective. I dare say those who have been fighting for equal rights since the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and before wouldn't deem legal and cultural acceptance of homosexuality "quick" in any sense of the word.

Still, whether long-coming or fast, change has arrived.

How epic change transpires also is a matter of perspective.

It seems to me that the driving catalyst behind the transformation of social and spiritual perspectives about LGBT issues has been relationships. When you actually know and love people who are gay it is much more difficult to uphold ideological opinions that would dismiss, judge, or condemn them.

Relationships destroy hypotheticals.

It's a point of view shared by many who were busy celebrating the Supreme Court decisions on Prop. 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act when I arrived at the UCC convention late last month.

"Space has been created for people to have genuine encounters and to be engaged in actual relationships," said the Rev. Mike Schuenemeyer, the UCC's executive and minster for LGBT concerns. "I think that's what has really turned the tide. The degrees of separation of people who know someone who is gay have diminished almost to zero."

Relationships are, at their very core, spiritual experiences. Years ago I read a book by British theologian John V. Taylor called "The Go-Between God." In it, Taylor argues that the Spirit of God is as powerfully present between people as it is in people.

But you have to be with another person – you have to know and be present for another person – for the Spirit to make the connections that we might never make on our own.

"People are making decisions about what is the lens through which I'm going to make these decisions," Schuenemeyer said.

"The bottom line is we [the UCC] have made a decision that the rubric that we're going to look at is what is the overall character of the life and ministry of Jesus. And when we look at that we see someone who didn't turn anyone away. So why should we?"

A few years ago, when the first significant rumblings of change in attitudes and beliefs about homosexuality and gay marriage began in my community, evangelical Christians, I wondered aloud if the church might be on the cusp of a new era. A Third Great Awakening, if you will.

I now believe that such transformation in social mores regarding LGBT issues is merely a manifestation of a much more global spiritual shift.

Reflecting on the 30th anniversary of the founding of his church, Willow Creek, the Rev. Bill Hybels told me that the dominant spiritual need of society had changed in the generation since the 1970s, when his megachurch began as a small congregation meeting in a movie theater.

"Thirty years ago, we argued about what was true," Hybels said. "These days, people seem to be asking, 'What's real?'"

Relationships are authentic. In relationship with God (and others) we can experience tangible grace that is real.

There is something in the air. Can you feel it?

Rather than a Third Great Awakening I believe we are standing in the threshold of a Great Grace Awakening. It's a move of the Holy Spirit drawing people away from legalistic and fear-based beliefs to a place some of us would call grace.

On the surface, it may seem to fly in the face of some traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. But it is aligned with a broader, more universal ethic that seems to be developing around genuine Christian love and grace – the very essence of Jesus' ministry and what makes it so revolutionary – as guiding principals.

Grace is the reason for the incarnation. God became human and walked in our sandals because God knows us and wants us to be known – by God and by each other. Or, to put it more succinctly, God loves us and wants us to love one another.

Grace says that there is nothing we could ever do that would make God love us less. And grace tells us that there's nothing we could ever do that would make God love us more. You are loved simply because you are and for all of who you are. Full stop.

Grace is more than mere equality.

Grace is a gift available to all of us. We can't earn it. We don't deserve it. But we get it anyway. Abundantly. Audaciously. Without caveat or qualification.

That doesn't make much sense to our human understanding of justice. It doesn't seem fair. It isn't fair. And that's precisely the point of grace.

Grace is difficult to define in mere words, though theologians have been attempting to do so for millennia. I've found that grace is more easily described than defined.

We tell stories about it. Musicians are singing about it. Artists are creating works of art that reflect it. Filmmakers, our modern-day shapers of the collective myth, fashion elaborate tales about it.

And whether they are conscious of it or not many of our leaders, both civil and spiritual, talk about it all the time. President Obama, for example, can't seem to get through a major speech without mentioning God's grace.

And then there's Pope Francis, a man who has in a few short months managed to re-enliven not only his Roman Catholic Church but people of faith worldwide. How has he done this? I assure you it's not due to his considerable charm and lack of pretense.

Pope Francis has transformed the face of faith by throwing open the gates of the kingdom and welcoming people into the love of God. He's done so by following the example of Jesus himself and going to the margins of society – to the poor, the powerless, and the oppressed – insisting that they are not just important, they are essential. To life. To faith. To God.

That is the kind of fierce grace that can reorient history and truly make the world a better, and more just, place.

Sometimes, by not just "accepting" but by loving without limits, we extend grace to one another. We give each other the space to be known, valued, and cherished for the beautiful and wondrously made people we inherently are.

When asked, "What is grace?" I often answer this way:

Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely don’t deserve.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Baccalaureate address at Wesleyan University in 1964, famously declared that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Amen, we say. May it be so.

Might I humbly suggest that the long arc of history surely does bend toward justice and, perhaps, beyond it – toward Grace.

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